


Contingency planning

by ThoseShoesAreBicurious



Category: Holby City
Genre: Everyone Is Gay, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 05:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13541028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoseShoesAreBicurious/pseuds/ThoseShoesAreBicurious
Summary: In which Cameron enlists Serena for some preemptive damage control.





	Contingency planning

**Author's Note:**

> Normally I am all about the morven/cam situation, but sometimes you just need a good Everyone is Gay AU.

Cameron catches Serena about ten minutes before the end of her shift. "Ms. Campbell?" He tilts his head towards her office, empty at the moment as Bernie is elbow-deep with Jac in a complicated RTC that had rolled in not long before. "Could I have a word?"

She ushers Cameron into her office and lifts her eyebrow expectantly. "Well?"

Cameron clears his throat nervously, and asks if he can buy her a drink at Albie's after she finishes. "There's something I was hoping to run past you, if you've the time. If you're not busy. Not, well, not work-related." 

"O-okay." Cam helped stabilize the RTC patient when she'd been rolled in; he must know his mum won't be out of theatre for hours. Serena hadn't thought they were quite to the point of socializing without Bernie or Morven as a chaperone, but is encouraged that he seems to be getting a bit more used to his mother's new relationship. At the least, she hopes his conversational overtures will have graduated from asking her about her viewing habits of lesbian cinema and telly. Slightly stilted conversation about the weather or surgical cases she can handle, but she'd prefer not to have an in depth discussion with Bernie's son regarding whether she'd seen and enjoyed 'Blue is the Warmest Color.'

Serena gives him a lift to the pub, and they make small talk about interesting cases from the day. At the pub, he takes her coat and ensconces her in one of the tables over in the corner, before making straight for the bar. She sighs and braces for an extended and awkward conversation regarding the weather, possibly the state of the roads, and perhaps infectious complications after surgical urgencies. Though she certainly appreciates Cam making the effort, she also hopes there's a large glass of Shiraz coming her way, or preferably more than one. 

Cam, evidently briefed well by his mother, places a very generously poured glass of shiraz before her, and a pint on his side of the table. He picks up a coaster, puts it down, and the picks it up and begins to worry it with his fingers. There's a beat of strained silence before they both speak at the same time.

"So, I wanted to --"

"So, have you any plans --"

Serena gestures for him to continue. He takes a deep breath and, still staring at the coaster he's been slowly shredding, begins hesitantly. "So I wanted... There's something I wanted to talk to you about, before I tell my mum, because I think it's going to upset her-"

"Cam," Serena cuts in. "I don't want to get in the middle of you two. Wouldn't it perhaps be better just to speak with her?"

He tilts his head and looks down at his hands again. "This is different. It's sort of about her in a way. It's... I'm seeing someone--" Serena's mind goes to Keely, the woman who'd nearly cost him his readmission to medical school and also nearly gotten him killed whilst she was drunk behind the wheel, and opens her mouth to object. Cameron pushes on, "Not Keely, someone else, someone I really like, and I want to tell her, but I think she's going to have a hard time and I think you should know."

At this point, she's frankly baffled, so she only gestures for him to continue and takes a hefty swig of her Shiraz. 

"It's a guy. I'm seeing a guy." Cam rushes, as if to get it all out at once. "Actually, it's Dom, Dominic Copeland, you probably know him, he's a registrar on Keller, and he also really wants me to tell mum because they have some sort of secret gay club where they meet on the roof of the hospital and panic together about having to talk about feelings or making a mess of their relationships, and he feels like he's lying to her, and..." At this point, Dom runs out of breath and looks up, meeting her eyes. 

Serena gamely schools her expression and clears her throat. "Cam, I'm not sure why you think your mum, of all people, would be upset about you dating another man. I fear I'm missing something here. She's a lesbian, why should she care if you were gay or bisexual or whatever it is the kids call it these days?"

"Is she?" Cam pushes.

"Is she what?" Serena feels like they're having two separate conversations.

"A lesbian? Because I've never heard her use the word. In fact, I've never heard her say she's gay or lesbian or bisexual or even Serena-sexual. The most I've gotten was 'that way' and 'not heterosexual.' I know, that she is in love with you and that you make her very, very happy."

"Not following, Cam." The train has left the station, and Serena is very much not on board.

"I mean that think that she's gay, but I think she still thinks, deep down, that it's not as good or not quite right. I think that, even though intellectually she knows better, she's going to blame herself or think she did something wrong, or blame her genes or whatever. You know, a classic Bernie Wolfe maneuver - develop a massive guilt complex, pretend like everything's fine, but not talk about it at all--"

"And then bunk off to another continent?" Serena finishes with a half-smile.

Cam returns her smile. "Something like that. Hopefully without the Ukraine bit this time round." He pauses. "I've known, you know. Since I was about 16 or 17, I knew I liked guys. And I remember, because that was around the time of the 2008 elections in the U.S., and all the media here were covering the 'traditional marriage' amendments and proposition 8, it was all over the news. And, I think because I'd just realized it about myself and I was trying to figure out how my parents would react, I noticed everything. I noticed that every time coverage of gay rights or marriage equality came on the radio while we were driving, she'd change the station. If we were watching news on the telly and it came up, she'd get up to get a drink or go into the other room. When I look back on it now, I think it made her uncomfortable, that it scared her, even just hearing the words. Back then, though, I thought it meant she thought it was wrong or awful - you know, macho army and so forth. My dad actually caught me once, with a boyfriend, and after he tossed him out of the house, he said "We will never tell your mother about this." So I never told her then. And then when I found out about Alex, I was so, so angry for a long time. Not as much about the affair, or the lying or the divorce, but because the younger me wouldn't have had to be so alone or so afraid if only she'd been able to be braver or more honest."

Serena nods, slowly. When she'd begun to have feelings for Bernie, she'd spent several frantic nights googling "am i a lesbian?" and various iterations on "can you like sex with men and also want to be with a woman" before deciding that there wasn't a particular label that she particularly liked and that the purpose of a label seemed to be to make everyone else more comfortable. Consequently, she'd never really felt the need to have a conversation with Bernie on where exactly they each fell on the Kinsey Scale (also something she'd found on late-night internet searches). Once Cameron has pointed it out, though, she realizes that, although she's always assumed Bernie is a lesbian, based on a few off-hand comments and past history, she's never actually heard Bernie say any of the words in the LGBTQ alphabet in any sort of relationship to herself. And before she'd buggered off to Ukraine, Bernied'd certainly seemed to feel that she was inflicting herself on an unwilling Serena, despite Serena's vivid, and embarrassing, memories of all but declaring her undying love and desire in the middle of the AAU. A phrase from her dive into google floats to the surface. "internalized homophobia is it?"

Cam gives a half-smile. "Something like that. Please don't tell her we had this talk. I just don't want to mess things up. We've been getting on so well, and I want this to be another step in that direction, rather than something that's going to make her feel guilty or like a bad mum."

"You have my word" Serena reaches across the table and covers his hand. "And Cam, thanks for talking to me. This may not have been what I thought we were going to discuss tonight, but I'm so glad you felt you could come to me with this." She raises her glass "A toast to preventing a Bernie Wolfe Special. And welcome to the family, I've been told there's something about toasters, but I don't know if that's just for the lesbians."


End file.
